When advance copies of The Dismemberment Plan's fourth full-length, Change, hit music scribblers' mailboxes last fall, the band had already been deemed indie rock's Cool New Thing. Their previous outing, Emergency & I, sold more than 30,000 copies and landed on just about everyone's best-of-the-year list. Pearl Jam had taken them to Europe. So, really, the only thing for the press to do this time around was spew rhapsodic on their bold new direction. Emo associations were dropped in favor of jam-band comparisons. Talk turned from the quirky, skewed songwriting to the cohesive, flowing composition. People inferred way too much from the album's title, claiming the album announced a pivotal shift, a new thing, a daring exploration beyond The Dismemberment Plan's former sound. And they completely ignored that every damn one of TDP's previous records could be aptly described the same way.
"We've been changing all of our lives," says guitarist/singer Travis Morrison. "The questions about The Dismemberment Plan suddenly sounding different for the fourth record are well, if you listen to the records, the only constant has been the waywardness."
Morrison attributes all the "new direction" talk to his band's relatively newfound hip factor.
"I think for a lot of people, the last record was the first one they ever heard," he says. "It's a shift, but we shift a lot. We're totally unreliable — we can do anything."
And the disc's name?
"I wouldn't say at all that the title is about that. It was just a really broad statement that people could read into."
From the get-go, this D.C. quartet (Morrison; guitarist/keyboardist Jason Caddell; bassist/keyboardist Eric Axelson; drummer Joe Easley) set some pretty fluid boundaries around their style, re-inventing themselves at every studio session while retaining certain inimitable elements. The Dismemberment Plan has flirted alternately and obviously with hip-hop, skewed pop, skronky posthardcore and more since their inception in 1993. Each release has shown a marked departure from the one before, and shows ample evidence of what was capturing the members' interests at the time. There's always plenty of the melodic sense, dynamics and angular riffage that mark so much quality fringe-rock, but TPD's most engaging facet is an inherent, abiding love for funk and R&B grooves. The spirit and energy of those physical rhythms wend their way through the off-kilter tuneage, informing all of it with a movement-inspiring vibe conspicuously absent from most hip shit with guitars.
A lifelong resident of the D.C. area, Morrison was exposed to more of what would later be termed "urban music" than the average suburban white kid.
"D.C.'s a pretty black city, and I know about it just because I grew up in Washington," he says. "Most white folks aren't aware of Frankie Beverly."
He's a big believer in the notion that every artist's particular environment, and how he or she interacts with it, exerts a large influence on that artist's material.
"Everything about your environment does. There's a reason why so much stuff from the Pacific Northwest sounds like Elliott Smith — it's rainy and depressing," Morrison says with a laugh. "I think our environment totally influences us."
It's ironic, then, that while coming of age at the epicenter of one of America's legendary emerging punk/hardcore scenes, he found himself more interested in hip-hop. As a high school student during the late '80s, "the Golden Age of Rap," as he calls it, Morrison was entranced by pioneers like Public Enemy and De La Soul, rather than the raging, testosterone-fueled conformity-in-nonconformity sprouting in his back yard.
"That's the stuff that was blowing my mind," he says. "I was never really into the hardcore thing until Fugazi came along, and blew my mind again."
The Plan has been compared to D.C.'s seminal posthardcore icons more than a few times in print. Though both bands inject more body-rocking rhythms and experimental guitar work into their music than most of their peers, TPD lacks the preachy tension of their elders. It's a celebratory sound, rather than a revolutionary one. And Change's organic, less manic flow further removes Morrison and company from their dissonant, fractal origins by incorporating more hooks and familiar structures. Where so many innovative outfits sacrifice listenability for envelope pushing, The Dismemberment Plan has managed an admirable amalgam of exploration and expression, mind and gut.
"There's times where you have to be very cunning, very smart, and there's times where you just have to go for it, you try to strike a balance," Morrison says. "Nobody lives their lives totally from their heart or their head — if they do, they're totally annoying. Those streams run through everyone's lives. You gotta have both if you want to connect."
They've connected with an astounding number of underground pundits, but TDP's dense, bouncy songs have met with a bit of confusion in the mainstream. The major label Interscope signed the band prior to Emergency & I, then dropped them without ever releasing the disc. Morrison considers The Dismemberment Plan neither mainstream nor indie; actually, he prefers not to think in those terms at all.
"I tend not to see independent music as that much of a break from the mentality of popular music," he says. "There's visionaries underground, there's visionaries above ground, and there's a whole bunch of people who are just following. The fact that (a band is) not on a major label doesn't make 'em any more interesting. Have I heard anything as forward-thinking as Timbaland come out of the underground recently? Not really."
After one more stateside jaunt, The Dismemberment Plan will head back into the basement to concoct their next great big left turn. Morrison is currently kicking a few things around, style-wise and seems to already know the direction he's starting to turn. Given their discography, the foursome is liable to do just about anything. It will, however, be steeped in grooves. It will make people move, dance, jump. And it will not sound like their last album. If another giant reach alienates the legion of fans garnered by Emergency & I and compounded by Change, then so be it.
"I'm generally pretty easily amused," says Morrison. "If it ended tomorrow, I'd get into cooking, live the domestic life."
This article appears in Apr 17-23, 2002.